Fighting Poverty is Like Fighting Slavery!

[Shane for Wax]

The Republican Party’s nominee for Indiana’s U.S. Senate seat recently compared the fight over tax rates and reform to former president Abraham Lincoln’s concern over slavery, alluding to Lincoln’s famous “House Divided” speech ahead of the Civil War.

State treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) rehashed a favorite GOP talking point — that 47 percent of Americans don’t pay income taxes — at the town hall in Columbus City, Indiana, comparing those 47 percent to the Confederate states that seceded from the Union in an attempt to protect and expand slavery. Referencing Lincoln’s speech, Mourdock said that as long as nearly half of Americans don’t pay taxes, “we are a house divided” that is presumably on the point to another fight, this time between the rich and the poor:

Uh... sure. Whatever you say.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/10/481645/mourdock-taxes-slavery/

[myusername]

Maybe they don't pay income taxes because their wages are shit?

So long as some of us earn ridiculous amounts of wealth and others struggle to meet their basic needs, we are a house divided.

[Distind]

Where exactly does that 47% number even fucking come from anyway? It's certainly not wage earners only, My ass as getting taxed pretty hard when I was a intern, and there wasn't 47% of wage earners making less than I do to dodge them. Didn't get it all back in a refund either.

[Cataclysm]

This needs to be posted.



And he's an idiot. 47% of Americans don't pay income tax. Because they are too poor. They still pay a lot of other taxes.

[Fpqxz]

And he's an idiot. 47% of Americans don't pay income tax. Because they are too poor. They still pay a lot of other taxes.

Sales taxes, property taxes, and excise taxes tend to be regressive, and fall harder on the poor.  There is really no reason for poor people to pay income tax.

Not to mention that living costs (in terms of cost of capital, and even day-to-day expenses like food) tend to be higher in poorer neighborhoods.  Don't believe me?  Go into any bad neighborhood and note the proliferation of payday loan operations, pawn shops, bodegas/convenience stores, and the relative lack of supermarkets (where food tends to be cheaper) and regular banks.

[Lt. Fred]

Expect some Republican to explicitly claim that the rich are enslaved by the poor.

[ThunderWulf]

The sad thing is knowing that he's serious.

[shykid]

Whatever. Wake me up when someone turns the US into a legitimately socialist Scandinavian-style welfare state. I'll pop the cork on a bottle of heavily taxed wine and celebrate.

[largeham]

Whatever. Wake me up when someone turns the US into a legitimately socialist Scandinavian-style welfare state. I'll pop the cork on a bottle of heavily taxed wine and celebrate.

Except that's not socialist, but whatever.

Yep, every right-wingers dream, tax cuts for the top percentiles and an increase in indirect taxes. Where have I heard that before (hint: France 1789)?

Also, wage slavery my dear friend.

[Sylvana]

I figured that 47% came from the 1% causing a recession not too long ago and millions of people loosing their jobs. Its hard to pay taxes when you are unemployed.

It really makes me wonder if these people knew that increasing the economy and getting more of the poor to actually get jobs and join the middle class will actually increase the tax base and thus actually lighten the load on the rich who can then actually get their tax cuts. Instead they demand their tax cuts because of the poor getting the benefit of the taxes. It is genuine backwards thinking. It is like cause and effect don't exist in their heads.

[tempus]

Expect some Republican to explicitly claim that the rich are enslaved by the poor.

Some of the rightwing pundits have already been mumbling that the vote needs to be restricted back to property owners for quite a while now without being called down.

Every time I think they've hit bottom, someone throws them a shovel.